Parasocial relationships are strange. They feel closer than some friendships but are hollow facsimiles, barely reaching beyond the level of acquaintance. They are unequal connections. They do not mutually benefit all participants. Why then does losing a connection to a stranger feel nearly as bittersweet as a true bond with a known companion?

🤝🏻 Continue reading “Parasocial relationships are weird”

I need to tell you of a grave error that I made several years ago that has haunted me ever since: gaining knowledge will only lead you to sorrow. You will never be happier than you are now by learning about the things that intrigue you. Don’t fall into the same trap as me and ruin your life like I’ve ruined mine. By investigating you expose your mind to nuance, new possibilities, difficult realities, and discomfort you didn’t believe imaginable, and it will permanently change you for the worse.

⚓️ Continue reading “Feeling stuck”

In the past few years I think I have started to learn that empathy, comprehension, growth, understanding, joy, and contentment come not from being more certain about what one knows but from accepting how little can be known by any one person in a lifetime. I may be more at peace now, but the process to get to this point was potentially the most painful and disruptive I’ve yet to experience.

📚 Continue reading “I used to be anxious about being thought of as ignorant”

This little side project is now built with Jekyll, a site deployment tool that was surprisingly easy to set up. Its simple controls allow me to quickly build the site into HTML files very similar to ones that I was writing before, but without all the hard work of maintaining code throughout each page. Now I can write posts in a simpler fashion and start to add new features with greater ease than if I continued coding everything by hand.

💻 Continue reading “Now on Jekyll”

The penultimate episode of The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill is a frustrating investigatory experience. The show presents to the listener the evidence of an abusive pastor in a permissive church system, building the case that this was an ongoing problem within the organization that eventually collapsed under the weight of the trauma dealt within. What I believe the episode fails to do and has continued to do throughout the series is to follow that evidence to its obvious conclusion, despite the pretense of seeking answers for how it all happened.

🎧 Continue reading “We aren’t asking the right questions”

I grew up in an Evangelical Christian culture. I was taught that the primary life purpose of a Christian was to propagate the message of Christianity through evangelism, sharing the story of Jesus to people who did not know or believe what was written in the Bible. Through this effort, souls would be saved from eternal damnation and more people would be prepared for the return of the savior of humanity. This mission was time-sensitive, because the return of Jesus was possible at any moment, and that event could potentially seal the fate of all living on Earth.

🦸🏻‍♂️ Continue reading “An identity crisis”

Life during the COVID-19 pandemic has been lonelier than I expected. My introversion has been useful in this time of isolation, but it did not prepare me for the simultaneous crushing ideological loneliness that has come from watching others respond to the demands of the pandemic. I feel more disconnected from my peers now than I ever have before.

🧠 Continue reading “We know less than we realize, but that’s okay”

The current state of skepticism about scientific studies is reaching a dangerous level. How did the support of vaccines degrade so much? Why did we start to believe conspiracies instead of the consensus from people more educated and intelligent than our neighbor?

💉 Continue reading “Vaccine hesitancy is putting us all at risk”

I had grown up in a culture that spoke of Ronald Reagan almost with reverence, believing him to be one of the last great leaders of the country. I had never felt a reason to question this thought, so I never investigated the history of the presidency. This interview caused me to doubt the narrative I had heard throughout my life.

🇺🇸 Continue reading “The time that I learned about Ronald Reagan”